Growing Up Trans

Filmmakers Miri Navsaky and Karen O'Connor's PBS-aired Frontline documentary explores the “T” in LGBT, which has received more media attention lately due to Olympic star Bruce Jenner's transition into celebrity icon Caitlyn Jenner. Growing Up Trans follows eight transgender children and teens who are responding to the new awareness of transgender issues by openly questioning and even changing their own gender identities. But this is hardly a smooth path: transgender teens and ‘tweens face an abnormally high rate of violent bullying, sometimes leading to suicide. While the young transgender people featured here are quite articulate and have supportive parents, it's still hard not to question whether the easy accessibility to pharmaceutical solutions—including drugs known as “puberty blockers” and “hormone blockers”—is truly in their best interest. And when a 9-year-old boy here expresses a desire to pursue “surgery and medicine to help me look like a girl,” many may feel uneasy about a child so young contemplating gender reassignment surgery. Sure to provoke discussion, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)